Privacy Policy

Policy version: 23 March 2024

This website is provided by World Classical Music Ltd (‘we’, ‘our’ or ‘us’). We are the controller of personal data obtained via our website, meaning we are the organisation legally responsible for deciding how and for what purposes it is used.

We take your privacy very seriously. Please read this privacy policy carefully as it contains important information on who we are and how and why we collect, store, use and share any information relating to you (your personal data) in connection with your use of our website. It also explains your rights in relation to your personal data and how to contact us or a relevant regulator in the event you have a complaint.

We collect, use and are responsible for certain personal data about you. When we do so we are subject to the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR).

This version of our privacy policy is primarily written for adults, including parents and guardians of child users. However, the acquisition and utilization of pertinent information about young individuals are crucial to facilitate their participation in examinations, competitions, event attendance, and registration for specific services. We classify young individuals as those under 14 years of age. If you fall within this category, kindly ensure you have obtained permission from your parent or guardian before providing any personal information to us.

This privacy policy is divided into the following sections:

What this policy applies to
Personal data we collect about you
How your personal data is collected
How and why we use your personal data
Marketing
Who we share your personal data with
How long your personal data will be kept
Transferring your personal data out of the UK
Cookies
Your rights
Keeping your personal data secure
How to complain
Changes to this privacy policy

What this policy applies to

This privacy policy relates to your use of our website only.

Throughout our website we may link to other websites owned and operated by certain trusted third parties to make additional products and services available to you. Those third party websites may also gather information about you in accordance with their own separate privacy policies. For privacy information relating to those third party websites, please consult their privacy policies as appropriate.

Personal data we collect about you

The personal data we collect about you depends on the particular activities carried out through our website. We will collect and use the following personal data about you:

your name, address and contact information, including email address and telephone number
your image, submitted audio and video materials
information to check and verify your identity, eg date of birth
your gender
location data
any delivery addresses specified for your order
your school
your competition participation history and achievements
your billing information, transaction and payment card or other payment method information
bank account and payment details
your activities on, and use of, our website
information about the services we provide to you
information about how you use our website and technology systems
your responses to surveys, competitions and promotions
names and email addresses of your instructors, mentors, and accompanists

You must provide this personal data to use our website and the services on it unless we tell you that you have a choice.

Sometimes you can choose if you want to give us your personal data and let us use it. Where that is the case we will tell you and give you the choice before you give the personal data to us. We will also tell you whether declining to share that personal data will have any effect on your use of our website or any services on it.

We collect and use this personal data for the purposes described in the section ‘How and why we use your personal data’ below.

How your personal data is collected

We collect personal data from you:

directly, when you or your authorised agents enter or send us information, such as when you or your authorised agents contact us (including via email), send us feedback, purchase products or services via our website, post material to our website and complete customer surveys or participate in competitions via our website, and
indirectly, such as your browsing activity while on our website; we will usually collect information indirectly using the technologies explained in the section on ‘Cookies’ below

How and why we use your personal data

Under data protection law, we can only use your personal data if we have a proper reason, eg:

where you have given consent
to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations
for the performance of a contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract, or
for our legitimate interests or those of a third party

A legitimate interest is when we have a business or commercial reason to use your personal data, so long as this is not overridden by your own rights and interests. We will carry out an assessment when relying on legitimate interests, to balance our interests against your own. You can obtain details of this assessment by contacting us at info.womcf@gmail.com.

The table below explains what we use your personal data for and why.

What we use your personal data for

Our reasons

Providing products AND/OR services to you

To perform our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract

Conducting checks to identify you and verify your identity or to help prevent and detect fraud against you or us

To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations

Enforcing legal rights or defend or undertake legal proceedings

Depending on the circumstances:

—to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations

—in other cases, for our legitimate interests, ie to protect our business, interests and rights

Customising our website and its content to your particular preferences based on a record of your selected preferences or on your use of our website

Depending on the circumstances:

—your consent as gathered by the separate cookies tool on our website—see ‘Cookies’ below

—where we are not required to obtain your consent and do not do so, for our legitimate interests, ie to be as efficient as we can so we can deliver the best service to you at the best price

If you have provided such a consent you may withdraw it at any time (this will not affect the lawfulness of our use of your personal data in reliance on that consent before it was withdrawn)

Retaining and evaluating information on your recent visits to our website and how you move around different sections of our website for analytics purposes to understand how people use our website so that we can make it more intuitive or to check our website is working as intended

Depending on the circumstances:

—your consent as gathered by the separate cookies tool on our website—see ‘Cookies’ below

—where we are not required to obtain your consent and do not do so, for our legitimate interests, ie to be as efficient as we can so we can deliver the best service to you at the best price

If you have provided such a consent you may withdraw it at any time (this will not affect the lawfulness of our use of your personal data in reliance on that consent before it was withdrawn)

Communications with you not related to marketing, including about changes to our terms or policies or changes to the products AND/OR services or other important notices

Depending on the circumstances:

—to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations

—in other cases, for our legitimate interests, ie to be as efficient as we can so we can deliver the best service to you at the best price

Protecting the security of systems and data used to provide the services

To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations

We may also use your personal data to ensure the security of systems and data to a standard that goes beyond our legal obligations, and in those cases our reasons are for our legitimate interests, ie to protect systems and data and to prevent and detect criminal activity that could be damaging for you and/or us

Statistical analysis to help us understand our customer base

For our legitimate interests, ie to be as efficient as we can so we can deliver the best service to you at the best price

Updating and enhancing customer records

Depending on the circumstances:

—to perform our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract

—to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations

—where neither of the above apply, for our legitimate interests, eg making sure that we can keep in touch with our customers about existing orders and new products

Disclosures and other activities necessary to comply with legal and regulatory obligations that apply to our business, eg to record and demonstrate evidence of your consents where relevant

To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations

Marketing our services to existing and former customers

For our legitimate interests, ie to promote our business to existing and former customers

See ‘Marketing’ below for further information

ations

To share your personal data with members of our group and third parties that will or may take control or ownership of some or all of our business (and professional advisors acting on our or their behalf) in connection with a significant corporate transaction or restructuring, including a merger, acquisition, asset sale, initial public offering or in the event of our insolvency

In such cases information will be anonymised where possible and only shared where necessary

Depending on the circumstances:

—to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations

—in other cases, for our legitimate interests, ie to protect, realise or grow the value in our business and assets

How and why we use your personal data—sharing

See ‘Who we share your personal data with’ for further information on the steps we will take to protect your personal data where we need to share it with others.

Marketing

We will use your personal data to send you updates (by email, text message, telephone or post) about our products AND/OR services.

We have a legitimate interest in using your personal data for marketing purposes (see above ‘How and why we use your personal data’). This means we do not need your consent to send you marketing information. If we change our marketing approach in the future so that consent is needed, we will ask for this separately and clearly.

You have the right to opt out of receiving marketing communications at any time by:

contacting us at info.womcf@gmail.com
using the ‘unsubscribe’ link in emails.

We may ask you to confirm or update your marketing preferences if you ask us to provide further products AND/OR services in the future, or if there are changes in the law, regulation, or the structure of our business.

We will always treat your personal data with the utmost respect and never share it with other organisations outside the World Classical Music Ltd. group for marketing purposes.

For more information on your right to object at any time to your personal data being used for marketing purposes, see ‘Your rights’ below.

Who we share your personal data with

We routinely share personal data with:

third parties we use to help deliver our products AND/OR services to you, eg payment service providers, warehouses and delivery companies
other third parties we use to help us run our business, eg marketing agencies or website hosts and website analytics providers
third parties approved by you, eg social media sites you choose to link your account to or third party payment providers
our banks.

We or the third parties mentioned above occasionally also share personal data with:

our and their external auditors, eg in relation to the audit of our or their accounts, in which case the recipient of the information will be bound by confidentiality obligations
our and their professional advisors (such as lawyers and other advisors), in which case the recipient of the information will be bound by confidentiality obligations
law enforcement agencies, courts, tribunals and regulatory bodies to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations
other parties that have or may acquire control or ownership of our business (and our or their professional advisers) in connection with a significant corporate transaction or restructuring, including a merger, acquisition, asset sale, initial public offering or in the event of our insolvency—usually, information will be anonymised but this may not always be possible. The recipient of any of your personal data will be bound by confidentiality obligations

Who we share your personal data with—further information

If you would like more information about who we share our data with and why, please contact us at info.womcf@gmail.com.

How long your personal data will be kept

We will not keep your personal data for longer than we need it for the purpose for which it is used. For example, promoting the competitions, promoting the award winners and other similar marketing purposes.

Transferring your personal data out of the UK

Countries outside the UK have differing data protection laws, some of which may provide lower levels of protection of privacy.

It is sometimes necessary for us to transfer your personal data to countries outside the UK. In those cases we will comply with applicable UK laws designed to ensure the privacy of your personal data.

We will transfer your personal data to our service providers located outside the UK.

Under data protection laws, we can only transfer your personal data to a country outside the UK where:

in the case of transfers subject to UK data protection law, the UK government has decided the particular country ensures an adequate level of protection of personal data (known as an ‘adequacy regulation’) further to Article 45 of the UK GDPR. A list of countries the UK currently has adequacy regulations in relation to is available here.
there are appropriate safeguards in place, together with enforceable rights and effective legal remedies for you, or
a specific exception applies under relevant data protection law

Where we transfer your personal data outside the UK we do so on the basis of an adequacy regulation or (where this is not available) legally-approved standard data protection clauses recognised or issued further to Article 46(2) of the UK GDPR. In the event we cannot or choose not to continue to rely on either of those mechanisms at any time we will not transfer your personal data outside the UK unless we can do so on the basis of an alternative mechanism or exception provided by UK data protection law and reflected in an update to this policy.

Any changes to the destinations to which we send personal data or in the transfer mechanisms we rely on to transfer personal data internationally will be notified to you in accordance with the section on ‘Changes to this privacy policy’ below.

Transferring your personal data out of the UK—further information

If you would like further information about data transferred outside the UK, please contact us at info.womcf@gmail.com.

Cookies

A cookie is a small text file which is placed onto your device (eg computer, smartphone or other electronic device) when you use our website. We use cookies on our website. These help us recognise you and your device and store some information about your preferences or past actions.

For further information on cookies, our use of cookies, when we will request your consent before placing them and how to disable them, please see our Cookie Policy.

Your rights

You generally have the following rights, which you can usually exercise free of charge:

Access to a copy of your personal data

The right to be provided with a copy of your personal data